


orbiting

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt Cassian Andor, Hurt Jyn Erso, Implied/Referenced Injuries, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspired by CLAMP, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Reservoir Chronicle Tsubasa, Kid Fic, Rogue One - some of them live, meeting the child version of your significant other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Bad things are happening to Cassian and to Jyn, but in the midst of the darkness and the nightmares they both run into unexpected sources of the will to live.(Or, simply: he gets injured and in his mind he meets the child version of her; she gets beaten and hurt and in her mind she meets the child version of him.)





	orbiting

**Author's Note:**

> Musical inspiration from LOOP, the first ending theme to the Reservoir Chronicle Tsubasa anime, performed by Sakamoto Maaya.
> 
> [Creditless ED](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhpgJhOPDUQ)   
>  [Full single](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNv8ExJxN5E)

It felt strange to be so warm, to be so safe: the last thing he remembered was screaming desperate orders at a handful of others, the last thing he saw their faces transfixed with hatred and fear. Acrid stink sharp-edged on his skin, the reek of explosives being set off at very, very close range, so much so that he had to fight off the urge to check his face, check his hands and feet: was everything still in place? Was he injured? Dust and smoke lashing him, flaying him, and he still felt the juddering impact of hitting -- rocks, dirt, and the too-familiar smell of copper and oxidizing hulls, falling to pieces like he thought his own bones might be shattering in the wake of the fight. His hands smelling burnt, as though he’d caught a lightning strike in his own hands, as though he’d been catching turbolaser bolts -- impossible, of course, he couldn’t do those things. 

He was no Jedi. No Force-user. That wasn’t him -- he didn’t even _believe_ \-- he didn’t see the point -- 

Instead of the myriad wounds and hurts and pains, that odd soothing warmth: and he felt like he could curl up and be comfortable, be caught and cushioned and safe, like being wrapped in shelter and blankets -- but where were the others, where was the promised transport, the thoughts in his mind running madly and senselessly together -- 

Footsteps: why did he think of something small, something defenseless, and what the Sithspit was something small and defenseless doing in this kriffing war-zone? Where was that small and defenseless thing, and what could he do to, to help -- how could he help, when he knew himself to be torn and bloody and all but broken --

The world was cast in blue and green and mist, and he raised himself from the dirt whence he’d fallen, heedless of the tears that he could feel cutting through the grime on his skin, heedless of the pain that slashed at his nerves, because there was something out there that needed to be helped, maybe some being that needed rescuing.

Footsteps, and somehow he managed to follow the wandering path of those quiet pattering sounds, scrabbling past jagged rocks and dust -- from battle-torn streets to a quiet cool cave in three steps, and the jittering wavering light that danced drunkenly up ahead.

And now that the ringing in his ears had somehow been washed away by the shadows of the cave, he could hear something even more heart-wrenching:

The cries of a lost youngling.

He wanted to look over his shoulder to find his comrades -- but there was nothing behind him. Only darkness.

So he could only look forward, to the light, and to those wretched cries.

“Come on,” he tried to say. He couldn’t make his voice any more comforting than the rasp that scratched its way out of his throat. “Come on, little, I promise I won’t hurt you -- I promise I want to help you.”

And all the response he got was a single anguished word: “Mama!”

He could almost feel something shatter within him at the sound: he let himself fall to his knees and he let the tears fall from his eyes unchecked, and he couldn’t say who he was weeping for.

Those little pattering steps stopped. Started up again. Throttled sobs tearing at him -- and stronger than those sobs, the pain behind them was something that he carried like immense weights around his neck and upon his shoulders.

The weight of his shame.

And he shook his head and sobbed and said, “Stay away from me. I -- I kill people. I leave them dead behind me. If you want to live, if you want to look for your mama -- stay away.”

Tears, not his own, falling onto his hands, and he imagined that those tears would never be enough to wash away the blood that he was carrying like a stain on his very heart, on whatever it was that made him sentient.

“Why are you crying,” asked that choked little voice.

He didn’t deserve that sympathy, that kindness, that shaken sweetness, and he needed to look away from whoever it was that had caught up with him -- whoever it was that wasn’t about to take him away for all the crimes he’d committed and abetted and turned a blind eye to -- but in order to look away, he needed to look up.

He needed to meet the eyes of that youngling.

And -- where had he seen her? Where had he met her? Why was that dark hair familiar? Why did he know those eyes, too deep and too full of pain for the flushed cheeks and the rounded chin -- he had never seen this girl before, this human youngling with the trembling mouth and the eyebrows pulled together in concern and in fear, and yet he could not stop himself from reaching out to her. As soon stop himself from taking her hand as stop breathing.

Her hands were tiny in his own: and she should have been shying away from him. He should be chasing her away. This child was a victim and a survivor and she deserved to keep on living, deserved to live, unsullied by him -- he couldn’t touch her, he didn’t have that right -- 

And it was only right that she was pulling away from him, that she was stepping away from him --

He closed his eyes. 

Soft touch to his cheek.

He blinked, and shied away, and -- still the little girl was dabbing at his tears with her torn sleeve. Ragged threads hanging from her jacket, and dirt on the cloth that she was tapping against his skin, but she looked determined, like she could stop him crying with just a thought.

“Don’t,” he tried to say.

“Do you know where my Mama is?” she was asking.

“I don’t.” And the other words slipped from him, words he never meant to say: “I lost my mother, too.”

“Then you’re like me,” the little girl said, hiccupping.

“No, I am not like you. I -- I’m not a good person.”

She was shaking her head. 

“Blood on my hands, little. You don’t want to be stained like me.”

Again she was pulling away.

He was better prepared for the loss of her this time, he thought.

He was better prepared for the way she suddenly turned her back on him.

He was not prepared for the rigid and almost familiar set of her shoulders, hunched over, and misery screaming in every line of her body.

He was not prepared for a voice that he _knew_ : a voice, brittle with unshed tears. “I am not -- not clean. Not like you. But not clean either.”

The darkness of the cave was closing in on him again, was blotting the youngling out of his view, was taking her away, and he heard his own voice calling for her, no name, just despairing sounds, inarticulate helplessness -- 

*

“Vital signs within normal tolerances,” he heard a clicking voice say, too close.

Cassian blinked, and blinked again, and the world was still washed in blue and green, in waves of warmth, and he took a deep breath of recirculated air and finally recognized the shape of the rebreather in his mouth, the mask covering his nose. The weight of the hoses tethering him, suspending him, in a world that was liquid and flowing and shivering around him.

Bacta.

The weight of that liquid holding him in place, buoying him up and down, healing. He fought the instinctive revulsion, the feeling of being trapped from head to toe in slime. He needed to take in the warmth instead, and the careful wrap and slosh of healing, of regrowth, of coming back together when he had come so perilously close to falling apart, to getting torn apart.

A shape like a hand, its outlines shivering in the movement of the bacta, and -- he couldn’t see the face, couldn’t see who it was that was reaching out to him.

And he didn’t need to see.

Ragged fraying threads.

Resistance in the bacta as he raised his hand -- he could see the bubbling and the soft rippling against the jagged wounds that had slashed him open from wrist to elbow -- and he touched his palm to the shadow of that hand.

Gone the rounded contours of a child’s face. 

The being on the other side was lean and hardened and all jagged edges, but touching that being felt like slotting into place, like fitting together, like his scars fitting with hers, flowing with hers, and he tried to guess where her eyes might be, tried to look at her, past the glass and the warmth of the bacta.

And he said her name, though the liquid swallowed his voice clean away.

///

Alone again, alone and cold and there was a kind of fever clawing down her nerves, the jittering aftershock of only the Force knew what drugs had been introduced into her, and the ringing in her ears wasn’t even loud enough to drown out the questions that were being barked at her. Questions about Saw. Saw was dead. Questions about Mon Mothma, about Davits Draven. What did she care about those beings who never really knew her? What did she care about those beings who knew nothing of what she carried on her shoulders, what she wore bound to her heart? The right place for those beings was -- in the nothing of the back of her mind. 

Nowhere near the place where she kept her most treasured memories. The memories of being with her mother, and being with her father, in the days when they were all still in a home of their own.

How long had it taken her to realize the fear in the lines of her mother’s face? The fear weighing down her father’s smile? 

And how long before she’d seen the lines of pain in her own face?

Treasured memories, that she could fall into, when everything else was falling apart, when she was being attacked from without and it wasn’t possible for her to defend herself or to hide away.

The sound of her mother’s voice, singing, the sadness threaded into every note.

The weight of her father’s eyes on her, as he passed her another book or another data pad, with the words much too complicated for her to take in. What was easy to understand was the idea that he was reassuring her, that he was deliberately sharing those words with her. 

She’d learned that it was possible to add to those treasured memories. That there were others who could give her such things, even though those others could be taken away from her, just as her mother and father were.

Impact, impact, crashing along her ragged nerves, and she slowly became aware of the fact that whoever had captured her, whoever had drugged her, was now attempting to batter her. Nothing new about the pain and nothing new about the stink of her own blood drying and turning cold on her own skin. Nothing new about the screams that she was holding back in her own throat through sheer force of will. 

Nothing new about the instinct to empty her mind. She did it easily. That way it was hard to beat secrets out of her. That way it was hard for anyone to know what she held dearest.

Gratefully she blacked out: and now she was impervious to the drugs and to the strikes. Now she could find some kind of shelter in the vast silence of her unconscious mind.

And in her mind she was running through a flaying wind, through savage snow: cold that bit into her with thousands of teeth. The cold that clawed into her and left her raw and, strangely, burning with numb. This, now this was nothing she’d ever known -- she’d never lived in places like this, with the winter storm shattered by the whine of small arms firing, the screams of the beings that were already dead and didn’t know it, the screams of the beings who fought back even as they were dying.

Nothing to do but to revert to her instincts, to the impulses in her skin and bones, and she dove for scant cover and was shocked to see that the barely sheltered nook with the ragged roof and the torn-up remains of someone’s tiny home, with the pots and the pans strewn in pieces beneath her boots, faded color in the gray-driven slush of the fight, was already occupied.

Occupied by a youngling, at that, and he seemed to be no older than a toddler, the shape of his face still a little soft around the cheeks, and the blaster in his hands was unsteady. Bare hands in this cold, and his knuckles layered with scrapes upon scrapes upon old old wounds. The blaster was only unsteady because those battered hands were small: as she stared, rooted to the spot, he leveled a glare at her, then whipped around and fired a shaky volley toward an advancing column of beings in thick armor and fur-collared jackets -- a volley that pushed him backwards with every shot, till he had to stop firing, run forward a few steps, and shoot once again. 

And -- what could she do? How could she help him? Would he even be open to her help, when he seemed grimly alone and intent on his self-appointed task anyway? Had he taken it upon himself to cover someone else’s retreat? Was he acting on someone’s orders? Was he simply killing to make sure he would survive?

She already knew who the boy was, and she already knew she was recoiling away from him -- she had to break through to him, she had to convince him that she was on his side. She had to fight and help him get out.

Grenades in her belt. She hadn’t thought about those, hadn’t even remembered that she’d been carrying them, but evidently she needed them in the dream: she grabbed the youngling’s shoulder and instinctively pushed the muzzle of his blaster down, hissing as it scorched her bare hand -- and she showed him the grenade in her hand. Understood the way his eyes widened, just a little, and the way he ducked behind her -- so she was the wall between him and the impact -- 

A good enough throw that she wasn’t knocked over -- but not good enough to erase the suspicion in the little’s eyes. 

She almost said his name, right there and then, and knew that to speak would be nothing more than an invitation to get shot.

Trust could not be offered to this youngling; the decision to trust anyone at all rested on his shoulders and nowhere else, and that decision could not be bought or encouraged or coerced or even induced in any way.

A hard lesson for anyone to learn, much less a youngling like this one -- but he was no ordinary youngling.

So instead of speaking to him any further, she acted: she threw another grenade and then, in the whistling echoes of that second blast, silence fell, harsh and sharp.

And she found herself facing the youngling, bearing the burden of his frown and of his scrutiny.

“What do you want,” he asked, eventually.

She bit at the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t say his name.

Said, instead, “I -- do you need any help?”

“Not me,” was his reply. “I think there were others. I -- I have to go.”

“But -- you don’t have enough clothes.” And she peeled off the ragged jacket that sat awkwardly tight across her shoulders. 

To her surprise he seemed to take the offered garment with little more than a quiet scoff.

And he began to march away from her.

But with his legs so short it was easy for her to rise and to pace with him.

“I don’t know what you’re following me around for.”

He looked irritable, or perhaps he just looked like he was too wary of everyone and everything. Perhaps he was living on the edges of his emotions, with all of his mind consumed in the vigilance that dogged his footsteps, the way he looked everywhere before taking a step, in the way that he carried himself with a stiffness that had nothing to do with his experienced grip on the blaster.

She would wrap him in her arms if he’d only accept -- but she knew that that would take a while.

So she walked with him, instead, and when she came across a familiar shape -- a short and stout stick, the same weight as the truncheons she still carried around in her missions -- she merely twirled it in her hand once, then held it loose and alert next to her hip.

“What if they shoot at you from afar?” 

She blinked. 

Now that she could look at him again she could see the slight worry in his eyes.

“Same as earlier,” she said. “Use me as a shield. Then you’ll have more time to shoot, and you’ll make better shots.”

Snow began to fall again, and she turned around in a slow circle, trying to see.

A fierce grip at her other hip: and she didn’t need to look to know that somehow the youngling had attached himself to her, was holding on to her with one fist.

She didn’t show him that she’d noticed: she kept looking around. Kept trying to be alert.

He was a steady presence beside her.

*

For Jyn, it was a struggle just to open her eyes, and all she could do was slit one eye open: and it was hard to make out the shadows moving around her. Tattered nerves telling her she was being carried. The dizzying movement of the world around her -- there was nothing she could do about where she was going now, and all she had to go on was the murmuring voice.

Those words in that voice seemed so far away, though she could feel, faintly, the vibrations in her numbed skin, in her deadened senses.

But the reassurance was steady and needed and welcome, and she couldn’t cling to it with her hands.

She strained her ears instead. Tried to think of a way to encourage the words so that they would keep flowing towards her.

She would hold on to that voice, if she could; she would wrap herself in that voice and warm herself in it, take shelter in it.

**Author's Note:**

> Look me up on tumblr at [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com)!


End file.
